The present invention relates to a roadway barrier for protecting pedestrians from an impact by a moving vehicle. In particular, the safety barrier of the present invention consists of two halves of generally triangular shape located on both sides of a pedestrian safety zone and designed to deflect any incoming traffic back into the roadway and away from pedestrians standing in a safety zone.
Media barriers are often disposed between opposing lanes of traffic on a divided highway to prevent head-on collisions. A common form of such media barrier are formed of pre-cast or poured concrete structures somewhat bell-shaped in cross section and having a wide bottom to resist tipping from impact with an automobile or other vehicle and a flared lower section to engage the tire of a vehicle veering from the road into the barrier and a more or less vertical upper section rising to a flattened barrier top. The flared lower section allows the vertical upper section to be set back far enough to provide clearance for the body of the vehicle. Thus, if a vehicle veers into the barrier at a small angle, the barrier acts to turn the car back onto the roadway to prevent a possible head-on collision with vehicles in the lanes of opposing traffic.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,302,047 discloses one example of an along-side pedestrian safety barrier, which is adapted to be longitudinally disposed between a roadway and an adjoining pedestrian walkway. The disclosed safety barrier features a concrete structure raised to about 24 inches in height and having an outwardly angled sidewall facing the roadway and a concavity on its bottom surface to engage the top and roadside surface of a standard curb.
Energy absorbing barriers have also been used to protect pedestrians. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,292,467 discloses an energy absorbing roadway barrier for dissipating kinetic energy upon impact by a moving vehicle includes an elongated core of reinforced high density concrete having barrier anchor members attached from the elongated core to a position for anchoring the barrier. An elongated barrier portion is formed around the elongated core and around the core anchor members to form a road barrier.
Existing axial, i.e., central line, barriers, however, do not rise to a height sufficient to protect pedestrians from a vehicular impact. Additionally, many of the presently available protection barriers have a curvature around a pedestrians""xe2x80x9csafety islandxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9csafety zonexe2x80x9d in the middle of the road. This curvature allows cars to ride onto the territory of the xe2x80x9csafety islandxe2x80x9d instead of protecting this territory. The need therefore exists for a barrier capable of protecting the pedestrians by preventing the traffic from crossing over the pedestrian crosswalk.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a barrier for protecting pedestrians from a vehicular traffic.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a pedestrian protecting barrier mounted at a pedestrian""s crosswalk.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a pedestrian protecting barrier, which protects pedestrians by preventing moving vehicles from crossing the barrier.
In accordance with the present invention, a pedestrian protection barrier is provided. The protection barrier has two half-barriers, each of the half-barriers placed on one side of a pedestrian crosswalk. The half-barrier is constructed of two segment-blocks placed adjacently at a centerline of a roadway. Each segment-block has a lower portion, an upper portion, two side-walls and an exterior wall. When segment-blocks are installed on the roadway, lower portion of each segment-block is placed into a cavity excavated in the ground of the roadway. The upper portion extends above the ground of the roadway to protect pedestrians. One pair of segment-blocks"" side-walls form an angle therebetween. The other pair of the side-walls can be located adjacently and parallel to one another. In a second preferred embodiment, the other pair of the side-walls also forms an angle therebetween. A wedge block is then placed into the space formed by the spaced apart sides of segment-blocks to insure structural integrity of the resulting half-barrier.
The above and other objects, aspects, features and advantages of the invention will be more readily apparent from the description of the preferred embodiments thereof taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and appended claims.